1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of portable terminals and more particularly, to a method and device of providing mechanical and software inputs to the portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of electronic communication industries in recent years, portable terminals light in weight, thin in thickness, and small in size are becoming a trend and functions thereof are being diversified. For example, a terminal may include a speaker device capable of realizing polyphony melodies or may include a mega-pixel color display device. In addition to providing various game content using the speaker device and a display device, the portable terminal provides various multimedia functions such as an MPeg-1 audio layer 3 (MP3) play function, a radio function, a Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) function, etc. Therefore, a key signal input device is more frequently used in the portable terminal to perform such various multimedia functions, and thus the key signal input device is considered an important constitutional element of the terminal.
A conventional portable terminal has a key signal input device which includes a contact pattern on a main board and a dome switch for allowing an electrical contact to be made with the contact pattern is pressed. When the dome switch is pressed, a contact is made with the contact pattern, and the portable terminal handles this as if a specific key signal has been input.
The conventional portable terminal also includes another input device which has a plurality of pressure sensors on a main board to output a signal in response to sensing a pressure change. When a signal is generated by the pressure sensor due to the pressure change, the portable terminal handles the signal as an input signal of a specific key.
The input device using the dome switch provides a user with a mechanical click feel, and thus the user can feel conformable in the use of the input device. In addition, the input device using the pressure sensor can configure various key signals depending on a pressure change. On the other hand, the input device using the dome switch has a limitation in configuring the various key signals of the input device. Further, the input device using the pressure sensor is inferior to the input device using the dome switch in terms of providing the mechanical click feel.